About my libraryThis library is, for me, Odysseus’ ship. It has persisted during my voyage through life to this point, but has been reorganized, purged, added to and remade often enough that it can hardly be said to be the same library. It is a library full of ethnographies, a result of the PhD’s in anthropology which my wife and I both hold. Parenting books have appeared in great numbers since the birth of our two daughters over the last six years. It includes less science fiction than at any time in my adult life, half the books being lost when we were last in the field. Ironically, this makes the friend who was to have stored the lost books one of the principal creators of the library in its current form. Finally, there is my paternal grandmother, who died thirty years ago, whose “Ancient Mariner” and Pennybacker’s “History of Texas” were carried by her to school in the first quarter of the last century. Her books, culled in the losses already mentioned, remain, as does she as a palpable presence in the notes scribbled in margins and letters tucked in the back of volumes. I feel the presence of lost friends, family members and eras of my own life when looking through this library. I look forward to the emergence of my daughters as its next builders.